Olivia happenings

Mike and I have been working on a very special project for the last few weeks with Olivia. Mike taught Olivia this very bad habit. Always falling asleep in the car for her afternoon nap. At first it is so simple and easy but then problems arise. She doesn't fall asleep or she wakes up when we try to take her out of the car which makes for a very grumpy Olivia. Then it snowballs into she is overly tired and really hard to reason with. Which is frustrating for Mike because he doesn't get a break either. So my suggestion was we needed to reteach Olivia how to fall asleep in her room again which was going to take dedication on both of our parts.

There is always the easy parent and the strict parent. Mike is the easy parent and I am the strict parent. I hate to hear Olivia cry but I just don't cave in as easily as Mike and I seem to be able to stick to a schedule a lot easier. On the weekend I started out by leaving Olivia in her room and told her that it was nap time and she should take a nap because it would make her feel better but she could stay up and play in her room but she had to be quiet and she had to stay for 2 hours. It wasn't too bad. Really she only cried for one day. About 50% of the time she would eventually fall asleep. Thankfully Thanksgiving vacation came and I was home for awhile and I could consistently put Olivia in bed. Unfortunately I had to lay down with her because we were went out of town but it was really useful in the end.

We got back from Thanksgiving vacation and now Olivia just knows that when it is nap time she needs to lay down and go to sleep. What a relief! And the best part is she has been sleeping for 2-3 hours. Unfortunately that was the easy task.

The compromise for the past 2 months is she could sleep in our room in her sleeping bag. But eventually she started climbing into our bed. There just isn't room for her in our queen bed and even if we had a king I am pretty sure she would be right next to one of us kicking us in the head or ribs. Then we started making her go to sleep in her room but she would eventually came back to our room and I always had her sleeping bag laid out.

Ever since I have been pregnant, good sleep is something that has eluded me for many many months. Plus I am the type of person that needs a good 8 hours to function so I am really grumpy if I can't get enough sleep. Last week Olivia woke me up 4 times in the middle of the night in about 90 minutes. I was really fed up. So Mike and I made her go to sleep in her own bed every night which was easy. Then she would wake up around 11:30 PM but we kept her door closed past 11:30 so when she would wake up and check the door and realize it was closed she would go back to bed. We have a child proof doorknob on the inside of her door. Then we would open it. Then she would proceed to wake up at 2:30 and if I took her back she would wake up at 4:00. One night I woke up at 2:30, then 4:30 then she fell out of her bed at 5:30. That was a very exhausting night. But I remained persistent with taking her back to her room every time and had the talk with her that she would earn a sticker for staying in her room all night and if she came back into our room I would bring her back to her room. Well the weekend was hard but well worth the effort. Right now she will stay in her room until 4:00 but I am hoping she will eventually learn that it isn't worth the effort to even come into our room. Plus I hate closing her door. I want her to feel like she has the choice. And she loves earning her morning sticker. My goal is to have Olivia in her room before we have this baby.

My second goal would be to have her potty trained before May. We haven't started yet but we are going to put Olivia back in cloth diapers after the holiday and I have ordered her some potty books and she really does well with a sticker system. Her night diapers are becoming less and less wet each morning. She loves to be like her cousins so I am hoping when we go back to Utah and she sees that her cousin is potty trained that she will be motivated to use the toilet.

My third goal is her dang binky. It is a love hate relationship. But we finally have her on a routine where she only gets it when it is nap time and bed time. And that is going to be sufficient for me. I'll probably let her have it for awhile and tackle that after she gets use to the new baby.